The Path Of Duty | Page 4

came back from Germany, had made it both
a general and a particular request, not only urging him to matrimony in
the abstract, but pushing him into the arms of every young woman in
the country. Ambrose had promised, procrastinated, temporized; but at
last he was at the end of his evasions, and his poor father had taken the
tone of supplication. "He thinks immensely of the name, of the place
and all that, and he has got it into his head that if I don't marry before
he dies, I won't marry after." So much I remember Ambrose Tester said
to me. "It's a fixed idea; he has got it on the brain. He wants to see me
married with his eyes, and he wants to take his grandson in his arms.
Not without that will he be satisfied that the whole thing will go
straight. He thinks he is nearing his end, but he isn't,--he will live to see
a hundred, don't you think so?--and he has made me a solemn appeal to
put an end to what he calls his suspense. He has an idea some one will
get hold of me--some woman I can't marry. As if I were not old enough
to take care of myself!"
"Perhaps he is afraid of me," I suggested, facetiously.
"No, it is n't you," said my visitor, betraying by his tone that it was
some one, though he didn't say whom. "That's all rot, of course; one
marries sooner or later, and I shall do like every one else. If I marry
before I die, it's as good as if I marry before he dies, is n't it? I should
be delighted to have the governor at my wedding, but it is n't necessary
for the legality, is it?"
I asked him what he wished me to do, and how I could help him. He
knew already my peculiar views, that I was trying to get husbands for

all the girls of my acquaintance and to prevent the men from taking
wives. The sight of an ummarried woman afflicted me, and yet when
my male friends changed their state I took it as a personal offence. He
let me know that so far as he was concerned I must prepare myself for
this injury, for he had given his father his word that another
twelvemonth should not see him a bachelor. The old man had given
him carte blanche; he made no condition beyond exacting that the lady
should have youth and health. Ambrose Tester, at any rate, had taken a
vow and now he was going seriously to look about him. I said to him
that what must be must be, and that there were plenty of charming girls
about the land, among whom he could suit himself easily enough.
There was no better match in England, I said, and he would only have
to make his choice. That however is not what I thought, for my real
reflections were summed up in the silent exclamation, "What a pity
Lady Vandeleur isn't a widow!" I hadn't the smallest doubt that if she
were he would marry her on the spot; and after he had gone I wondered
considerably what she thought of this turn in his affairs. If it was
disappointing to me, how little it must be to her taste! Sir Edmund had
not been so much out of the way in fearing there might be obstacles to
his son's taking the step he desired. Margaret Vandeleur was an
obstacle. I knew it as well as if Mr. Tester had told me.
I don't mean there was anything in their relation he might not freely
have alluded to, for Lady Vandeleur, in spite of her beauty and her
tiresome husband, was not a woman who could be accused of an
indiscretion. Her husband was a pedant about trifles,--the shape of his
hatbrim, the pose of his coachman, and cared for nothing else; but she
was as nearly a saint as one may be when one has rubbed shoulders for
ten years with the best society in Europe. It is a characteristic of that
society that even its saints are suspected, and I go too far in saying that
little pinpricks were not administered, in considerable numbers to her
reputation. But she did n't feel them, for still more than Ambrose Tester
she was a person to whose happiness a good conscience was necessary.
I should almost say that for her happiness it was sufficient, and, at any
rate, it was only those who didn't know her that pretended to speak of
her lightly. If one had the honor of her acquaintance one might have
thought her rather shut up to her beauty and her grandeur, but one could

n't